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SaintSal: It's a good start but apart of semantics (icons with meaning) you also need a grammar to call it a language. In case of visual language it means that

by zeratul 15y ago

SaintSal: It's a good start but apart of semantics (icons with meaning) you also need a grammar to call it a language. In case of visual language it means that there is a way of merging simple glyphs into more complicated icon. Here is an article that describe how it can be done in medicine: http://www.sd.polyu.edu.hk/iasdr/proceeding/papers/Collaborative%20Design%20Research_%20The%20Visualization%20of%20Medical%20Concepts.pdf http://www.sd.polyu.edu.hk/iasdr/proceeding/papers/Collabora... I'm looking for an open source project that I could use in my applications. There is http://thenounproject.com/ http://thenounproject.com/ but it does not have grammar. The merging of icons is done for you (e.g., the iron icon with one, two, or three dots)

SaintSal 15y ago
Thanks, that's really helpful. I hadn't thought of grammar explicitly, mainly because I was more focused on something like design patterns. So far, the emergent grammar has been: equity and/or balance sheet, then an event or a profit/loss, then back to equity and/or balance sheet. I'd like to see what people try to do with this before insisting on a grammer, so you're right, maybe calling it a visual language is overstating where things are at the moment.